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Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Do American birds taste funny because we chlorinate them?

I'm baa--aack.

We were fed by Aramark, which a colleague described as the "Blackwater of caterers." This friend goes to a lot of different writers' conferences and says that the food, whether in Vermont, Tennessee, Ohio, etc., is always the same soylent-greenesque plasma. People actually thought I was vegetarian, as in my zeal to avoid MSG, nitrates, mad cow, bad tasting meat, I pretty much stuff to the salad bad hummus (metabisulphates, probably) and salad (pesticides, but oh well). So MAN FERTILITY sent me this tidbit from Slate. I know they already feed chickens arsenic, antiobiotics, other chickens, but chlorine??

Funky Chicken: Do American birds taste funny because we chlorinate them?

By Nina Shen RastogiPosted Monday, July 28, 2008, at 6:58 PM ET

Barack Obama was vague about key trade issues during his recent trip to Europe, according to an analysis published in Friday's New York Times. The article referred specifically to the 11-year European ban on importing chlorinated chickens from the United States, a sanction that "is less about safety than about taste." Does chlorine really make our chickens taste funky?